Monthly Archives: August 2008

Friends, Romans, Countrymen…lend me your ears for this important announcement:

After serving more than a year as the administrator and editor of the Kennedy for President website, I’ll be leaving this gig September 1 to tackle a new book project.

But don’t worry – the site is in good hands. We have a wonderful group of volunteers here, and the work will continue as always under the watchful eye of our new editor, Tiger Haynes (who is every bit the fighting political animal his name implies).

Many more exciting changes are currently in the works – including a new domain name for the site (since Kennedy is obviously not running this year, RFKin2008.com is getting a bit outdated!) and a new look, too. We’ll be announcing those in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned for that!

ABSENT…BUT NOT REALLY GONE

Of course, I’m still one of Bobby’s biggest fans and feel fortunate to also call him a friend, so you can surely bet I’m going to miss this gig! Most of all, I’ll miss having the opportunity to interact with the amazing community we’ve built here on a daily basis.

Other professional and personal commitments in my life have left precious little time left to volunteer this fall. I decided it was better to turn the wheel over to someone else rather than let the quality of this blog slip. We all know Bobby deserves the very best we can give, so I hope he will be pleased with the new direction of this site as we move forward with our mission.

I’ll still be checking in from time to time here (like I could stay away!), posting comments, sharing thoughts and showing support. I’m still on board with the draft Kennedy movement 100%, and plan to keep in touch with many of you who have become very dear friends.

Thanks to everyone who has given such tireless support this past year. You guys and gals are the greatest!

Let’s keep this bus rollin’…and start organizing for 2012.

I’ll see you on the barricades!

Keep the faith,

New Frontier

PS – Our incoming editor, Tiger Haynes, asked me if I had any “famous last words” to post as the founding editor of the RFKin2008.com web site; some helpful bit of advice or encouragement for the troops. Hmmm…

After giving it a good deal of thought, I decided to share what has been my journalistic motto these past 20 years. It always served me well – may it do the same for you:

“Question authority…including the authority who told you to question authority.”

Like many Americans — especially those of us who worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign — I spent Election Night 2004 wondering how the exit polls, which had overwhelmingly predicted defeat for George W. Bush, got it so wrong.

Baffled — and sick at heart that a President so unpopular and incompetent was heading for a second disastrous term in the Oval Office — I heard the rumors of a Republican campaign to suppress Democratic votes.

And then, painstakingly, page-by-page, with no agenda in mind but finding the truth — the same skills I have employed in my career as an attorney — I began to examine the evidence. What I found shocked me to the core — and by the time I pieced it together in an expose for Rolling Stone magazine, I was convinced beyond all doubt:

The Republican Party mounted a coordinated, criminal campaign to steal the 2004 Presidential election — and it worked.

Now, as another election approaches, you and I need to stand with Democrats for America’s Future (DAF) to make absolutely certain it doesn’t happen again. You can get involved now by supporting us here.

We need to stand up because our country cannot stand for another four years of reckless Republican policies. But most of all, we need to stand together because the integrity of our democracy is at risk.

This is about more — far more — than who wins the next election, as important as that is. If we can’t guarantee the citizens of a democracy that their votes will be counted, every other liberty we hold dear is at risk.

And that, I regret to say, is a guarantee that our nation failed — abysmally — to uphold in 2004. Consider:

Of six million Americans living abroad — a constituency known to vote Democratic — nearly half either never received their ballots or received them too late because the Pentagon shut down a web site that files overseas registrations.

George W. Bush “won” New Mexico by 5,988 votes — but more than 20,000 ballots there weren’t properly tallied.

Nationwide, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting machines.

You might be wondering how irregularities like that happened all over the country. After all, elections are administered by state officials free of partisan influence, right?

Well, allow me to introduce you to a man named Kenneth Blackwell. He’s the former Republican Secretary of State in Ohio — the state that, as you surely recall, officially tipped the 2004 election to George W. Bush.

As such, Blackwell’s job was to administer an impartial election. But he had another portfolio that year — Ohio chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

If that sounds like a conflict of interest, it was. And Blackwell — having earned his stripes as a top Bush-Cheney official during the notorious Florida recount of 2000 — exploited it with relish.

In the run-up to the 2004 elections, Blackwell — known in Ohio as a partisan Republican zealot — allowed 300,000 voters to be expunged from the registration rolls, including almost one in four voters in predominantly Democratic Cleveland.

Blackwell also set up a network of kangaroo courts at which Ohio Republicans challenged Democratic voter registrations — often without giving the voters in question a fair opportunity to stand up for their rights.

The whole affair was so egregious that a federal court declared it unconstitutional — but by that time, much of the work was done. All told, more than 35,000 newly registered voters were challenged. Many were disenfranchised outright, and many more were intimidated.

I could go on. Sadly, though, we can’t reclaim what I am now convinced was the stolen election of 2004 — an election in which the Republican Party implemented a nationwide effort to suppress Democratic votes.

What we can do, though — and must — is work together to make sure every last Democratic vote is counted in 2008. That’s where Democrats for America’s Future comes in.

DAF is mobilizing a nationwide “NoVoterLeftBehind.net” project that will monitor voting on Election Day in 2008. The squad will shine a public spotlight on every last irregularity. Democrats for America’s Future will urge every Democratic candidate not to concede a single race until every last vote is counted.

And from beginning to end — from the voter registration process to Election Day challenges and beyond — DAF will fight every last fight to the very end, insisting that every American is guaranteed a democracy’s most sacred right: their vote.

Here’s the challenge: We have every reason to believe the Republicans are, at this moment, preparing a 2008 vote-suppression effort that will rival, or even exceed, the dirty tricks they pulled in 2004.

Unless DAF is equally active — unless they have the resources to monitor every vote, every precinct, every campaign, every court challenge — the Republicans may very well get away with it again.

That’s why I urge you, in the strongest terms, to rush a generous contribution of $30, $50, $100, $250 or even more to support DAF’s “NoVoterLeftBehind.net”. Your help will ensure that this effort is as aggressive and broad-based as it absolutely must be to succeed.

* Those of you who weren’t fortunate enough to make it to Denver for the DNC, here’s what you missed Wednesday. The Kennedy family, friends, and longtime supporters gathered at the Brown Palace Hotel to remember RFK and celebrate his legacy.

We bring you coverage of this star-studded event from local and national sources below. According to all accounts we’ve heard so far, RFK Jr. was the star of the show!

Building on the emotional appearance of Uncle Ted at the Democratic convention two days earlier, Kennedy departed from his usual environmental concerns to connect his father’s mission with the state of America today.

“When I was 13, I went on a trip to Europe with my father and mother,” he recalled. “We went to Czechoslovakia and Poland and Germany. We were greeted by hundreds of thousands of people, who came to hear an American politician. It wasn’t because [President Kennedy] had been martyred three years before. Even when Eisenhower went to Kabul and Tehran, he was met by thousands of Muslims who carried American flags.

“It took 230 years of discipline and restrained leadership by Republican and Democratic Presidents to build up a reservoir of love for the U.S. In the last seven years, through incompetence, we have drained those reservoirs dry.”

Kennedy went on to indict the Bush administration for “torture, suspending habeas corpus and eavesdropping on hundreds of thousands of people.”

Though Ted Kennedy was back in Massachusetts continuing his cancer treatment, 80-year-old Ethel Kennedy came with a flock of children and grandchildren. Her daughter Kerry, who’s been at the front of the RFK Memorial’s human rights crusade, told us she’s thought about running, “but I’m divorced with three kids. Right now, I want to be a mother.”

What about rumors that her increasingly visible cousin, Caroline Kennedy, might run for office?

“I don’t know,” said Kerry, “but she’d be so great. She really has the capacity to bring people together.” Bobby agreed: “We’d all be delighted to see her [run].”

Meanwhile, Gov. Patterson confirmed that the Triborough Bridge would be officially renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge on Nov. 19.

* Here’s what the local Denver CBS affiliate had to say of the RFK Memorial event:

A special tribute to Senator Robert F Kennedy in Denver

DENVER (CBS4) ― The Democrats are celebrating their historic nomination this week as Barack Obama becomes the first African American candidate from a major party to run for president. But the party is also celebrating its heritage and the Kennedy family has been the focus of several events.

Many of the Kennedys joined other dignitaries to honor the legacy of another member of the family, Robert F. Kennedy, on Wednesday.

There were Kennedys everywhere: Ethel, Patrick, Robert Jr., Kathleen and Max were all at the event. Also on hand were the Clintons, Gov. Paterson of New York and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter.

“The life he lived was based on hope and bringing the people together,” Max said. “If you look just at that one photograph of my dad with Cesar Chavez breaking bread together … I think that encapsulates the idea of the United States coming together for the first time.”

“He was also one that stepped outside the establishment,” Rev. Al Sharpton said. “To oppose the war in Vietnam he showed courage, he showed vision and ultimately it cost him his life.”

The event was held by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, an organization that focuses on human rights and social justice.

* In this interview with Air America’s David Bender, Bobby talks about Ted Kennedy’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, gives an update on the Senator’s health, reflects back on his Uncle John F Kennedy’s struggle to win the nomination in 1960, and speaks of passing the proverbial torch from the Clintons to Barack Obama.

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

This is one in a series of commentary pieces on CNN.com from both McCain and Obama supporters attending party conventions.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the U.S. has tremendous energy resources, including wind and solar.

(CNN) — Barack Obama is a transformational figure in American history who’s been able to excite the same intensity of feeling among Americans as I saw during my father’s 1968 campaign and my uncle John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.

As a six-year-old, I attended the Democratic Convention in 1960 and traveled across the country in the Caroline K [the Kennedy campaign plane].

The excitement I saw then is echoed today as Barack Obama outlines his plans to get the nation moving in the right direction, to restore America’s role as an exemplary nation.

A sophisticated, well-crafted energy policy designed to de-carbonize America is the centerpiece of Sen. Barack Obama’s domestic economic package.

It will sharpen our competitiveness by reducing our energy costs, dramatically reduce our national debt, stimulate our economy far more effectively than tax cuts by putting conservation savings in the hands of every American, and be the engine for creating millions of green-collar jobs that cannot be outsourced.

Obama understands, as John McCain does not, that an intelligent energy policy is also the natural fulcrum for U.S. foreign policy and national security. As Obama has warned, “One of the most dangerous weapons in the world today is the price of oil. We ship nearly $700 million a day to unstable or hostile nations for their oil. It pays for terrorist bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut.” See McCain and Obama energy plans

Obama’s policy, which anticipates eliminating imports by 2012 or earlier, is feasible and desirable. Respected economists and energy industry entrepreneurs, high-level business representatives from Fortune 500 companies and large investors are already enlisting to invest in the infrastructure to facilitate the transition.

Every nation that has taken serious steps to de-carbonize its energy portfolio has reaped immediate economic growth. Sweden announced in 2006 the phase-out of all fossil fuels (and nuclear energy) by 2020. In 1991, the Swedes enacted a carbon tax — now up to $150 a ton — closed two nuclear reactors, and still dropped greenhouse emissions to 5 tons per person, compared with the U.S. per-capita rate of 20 tons.

Thousands of entrepreneurs rushed to develop new ways of generating energy from wind, the sun and the tides, and from wood chips, agricultural waste and garbage. Growth rates climbed and the heavily taxed Swedish economy is now the world’s eighth richest by gross domestic product.

Iceland was 80 percent dependent on imported coal and oil in the 1970s and was among the poorest economies in Europe. Today, Iceland is 100 percent energy independent, and according to the International Monetary Fund is now the fourth most affluent nation on Earth.

There are many other examples: Brazil’s efforts to de-carbonize its transportation system has resulted in the largest and most robust economic expansion in its history.

The United States has far greater domestic energy resources than Iceland or Sweden. We sit atop the second-largest geothermal resources in the world. The American Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of wind. Solar installations across just 19 percent of the most barren desert land in the Southwest could supply nearly all of our nation’s electricity needs even if every American owned an electric car.

Obama’s vision of de-carbonizing our economy begins with a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put downward pressure on carbon emissions. He will invest billions to revamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage power transmission system and press for cost-saving building and appliance standards that would cut our energy demand by half.

For a tiny fraction of the projected cost of the Iraq war, we could completely wean the country from carbon. Homes and businesses will become power plants as people cash in by installing solar panels and wind turbines on their buildings, and selling the stored energy in their plug-in hybrids back to the grid at peak hours. By kicking its carbon addiction, America will increase its national wealth. Everyone will profit from the green gold rush.

We will create a decentralized and highly distributable grid that is far more resilient and safe for our country; a terrorist might knock out a power plant, but never a million homes. And for the first time in half a century, we will live free from Middle Eastern wars and entanglements with petty tyrants who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.

New entertainers and awards just added for tonight’s Etown DNC show at Denver’s Temple Buell Theatre.

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello (performing as The Nightwatchman), R&B legend Irma Thomas and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been added to Etown’s star-studded lineup, joining James Taylor, Graham Nash, David Crosby and Ani DiFranco.

Tonight’s show is unfortunately already sold-out, but will be recorded for a future Etown broadcast. Morello and Thomas will perform, and Kennedy will receive the show’s “e-chievement” award for making an impact on the community.